Preview: Andrew Norman: Better Living Through Architecture

Episode Two of MTC, 'Andrew Norman: Better Living Through Architecture,' comes out July 29

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Alexander Overington

Andrew Norman
(Timo Andres)

Andrew Norman was a well-feted kid composer, a precocious pre-adolescent who wrote works with grand, filmic gestures for his middle school orchestra and had the local papers filling their style sections with profiles invoking Mozart. Then he went to college.

All of a sudden, Andrew's musical world exponentially widened; he was exposed to styles and practices so far outside of his previous experience that he stopped composing altogether. How could he write what he had been writing in a world rich with Lachenmanns, Xenakises and Carters, who were manipulating, torquing and stifling sound to create a whole different world of music? Andrew almost left music entirely for architecture, but in flirting with this other career, he actually found his way back to composition, ultimately birthing a style that stunningly weds texture and drama in a unique and wonderful way.

Episode Two of Meet the Composer, 'Andrew Norman: Better Living Through Architecture,' comes out July 29 on iTunes and at q2music.org.

Related

Follow WQXR

About Meet the Composer

Meet the Composer is a podcast that takes listeners into the minds and creative processes of the composers making some of the most innovative, compelling and breathtakingly beautiful music today. New episodes the last Tuesday of every month through October; bonus tracks in between.